Tell me, from outside of the genre who can really distinguish classic games like anything other than just space shooter #453? On the other hand look at Touhou, while the games themselves remain just a relatively small subsection of the whole Touhou fanbase I can assure you than a lot more than a handful of those players were drawn in by the vast amount unique characters while having pre boss fight interactions to flesh them out a bit, really good music and setting that is not just the regular airplane/space shooter affair. While tight gameplay and interesting scoring mechanics are important you also really need to take in mind that aesthetics and a good sense of character are really important to hook people first. I've heard once that as most arcade era games Shmups are just very intrinsically motivated challenge runs instead of the current design trends of making them extrinsical experiences, the genre demands a lot more of you than other ones without a clear goal of the nebulous "git gud", but unlike fighters and souls games (and other modern difficult games) there really isn't any clear end goal like beating your opponent or reaching till the end of the game, not helping matters that shmups had always had the ability to just credit feed your way to the end.īut the thing truly holding the genre back if you ask me is just that, and pardon me on my crudeness but I really need to vent, designers really just giving a shit about pandering to the already established and super ultra hardcore crowd first and others like midcores and casuals being relegated like second class citizens because hardcore shmup players have their head so far up their asses that they just don't want really any innovation on how level structure and design should be and anything other than that can get derised pretty hotly. Ok this is going to be a long one since I'm gonna rant and while I really like the genre I can actually give some outside insight and I'm gonna get into some maybe unconnected tangents due to just really spouting my thoughts one by one.įirst things first, the genre is by design a niche appeal, no way around that. There is a lot that can be said but those are my thoughts at the moment. That last one, to my mind, actually increases the gap between observer and participant, because they're seeing the novelty of the thing without actually getting involved and that makes it even less likely that they will jump in. If it's not intimidating, metal is outlandish and interesting for an observer in like an anthropological sense so are bullet hells. Metal, at least at first glance, is intimidating so is shmups. Metal is rooted in 70s/80s popular culture so is shmups. Metal has very little obvious mainstream appeal same with shmups. I love heavy metal music and I think the comparisons between shmups and metal are very germane, and not just because many shmups have metal(ish) sountracks. What about now, when any regular ol' jackoff can use Game Maker and release a shmup on Steam quite easily? For example, I just watched u/shmupjunkie's excellent history of Compile shooters, and their president in the 90s criticized stg design as being subpar *back then*. If someone is curious, and stumbles upon a bad game, that will color the way they see shmups, possibly forever. At a certain point one has to develop personal goals with shmups and that isn't a natural thing for today's gamer.Īnother reason is that there are a lot of subpar shooting games, and there have been for many years. People don't really do that anymore, unless you think of k/d as a score. In tandem with this is the idea of playing for score. They aren't sexy like the latest sandbox game so they have no draw for kids raised on Call of Duty or GTA. So for many people just getting started in the gaming hobby, shmups can seem kind of old timey. They haven't changed in any essential way (certainly not visually) since then. I think what u/diabolical3b says it's true: the genre has *always* been "just there." Even if we choose Space Invaders as a starting point, shmups are some of the earliest forms of video games.
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